Do you still use your old radios

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

I have a very old pre WW2 AM-FM radio. Emerson 460. The FM is on 41 to 50 MHz. This was the original American FM broadcast band, but this was changed to the modern 88 to 108MHz FM band in 1945. Something about making room for TV channels, but in reality RCA wanted FM to die to avoid competition for its new product: television. More details at my web page http://www.geocities.com/wa2ise/radios/fm45.html

Next weekend, as FM will have its 75th annerversary, there will be a special broadcast on 42.8MHz in the New York City area to celebrate. Using Major Armstrong's tower in Alpine NJ. Edwin Armstrong invented/developed FM.

You can still hear things like baby monitors and the like on the 41-50 MHz range of your Emerson 460, and all other prewar FM radios which had this band. The tuning range of most of these radios goes a little above and below what the tuning dial would have you believe (the actual tuning range is maybe 39-51 MHz or something like that), so you could probably even hear ham radio activity at the low end of the six-meter band if there is any in your area. If you can fudge the high end of the dial on your set so that it will tune to 52-54 MHz you might be able to hear 6m FM repeaters, again if there are such near you (6 meter FM was pretty much overshadowed by similar repeaters on 2m in the late '60s and beyond; now, 6m FM is likely all but dead).

I certainly hope you were kidding when you said that RCA was trying to kill off FM radio, or at least wished it were dead. I do know that the 44-50 MHz range, once assigned to television as channel 1 (many early postwar sets had this channel on a 13-position tuner), was eventually reassigned and is now the hams' 6-meter band (after a bit of realignment of frequency bands after the war). But I never dreamed that RCA was actually hoping the idea of FM radio broadcasting would be a passing fancy and would fade away eventually. If so, they were in for one heck of a surprise (and disappointment, no doubt) when FM on the then-new 88-108 MHz band became the huge success it is today. Stereo FM (no one ever calls it multiplex anymore, although that is the technical term for the standard), SCA, and now a new thing called high-definition digital FM (there is exactly one[!] such station in Cleveland)--the medium is nothing like it was when Armstrong pioneered the system in 1947. Now, if FM broadcasters would start carrying something other than noise on their stations (which is what a lot of modern rock music is these days), the medium could again be a vehicle for good-music broadcasting, which is probably what Armstrong envisioned FM radio to be in the first place. It is too bad, IMO, that FM stations use easy listening only as a way to get the station on the air initially; this automated format lasts maybe a few weeks or months, then another broadcasting company buys the station and boom--out goes the automated beautiful music and in come loudmouth DJs and so-called "music" by rock groups no one under the age of 18 has ever heard of. Cleveland lost three of its best FM easy-listening stations this way in the last twenty-five years or so (with the last one going rock just 15 years ago), so now almost every station in the city is rock or some variation of it. Hardly what Mr. Armstrong had in mind.